Glen Cook - Water Sleeps

“Master Santaraksita did the flying, Mr. Swan.” Suvrin needed to work on his sense of humor. He did not own a proper Black Company attitude.

I asked, “Why not try it yourself, Willow? Take a run at the books.”

“You promise to let me land on you?”

“No. But I’ll blow you a kiss as you fly by.”

“It’d probably help if you people would shut up,” Goblin said. He rose. “But by being blindingly, blisteringly brilliant I’ve worked it out anyway, already, in spite of you all. We get to the lecterns by using the golden pickax as a passkey. That was why Narayan Singh was so upset when he saw what we had.”

“Tobo still has the pick,” I said. A minute later I said, “Don’t everybody stumble all over each other offering to go get him.”

“Let’s just go together and all be equally miserable,” Goblin suggested. “That’s what the Black Company is all about. Sharing the good times along with the bad.”

“You trying to con me into thinking that this is one of the good times?” I asked, crawling into the cave right behind him.

“Nobody wants to kill us today. Nobody’s trying. That sounds like a good time to me.”

He had a point. A definite point.

Maybe my Company attitude needed attention, too.

Behind me, Suvrin grumbled about starting to feel like a gopher. I glanced back. Swan had had an attack of good sense and decided to bring up the rear, thereby making sure that Master Santaraksita did not stay behind and tinker with things that might cause a change in Goblin’s opinion about this being one of the good times.

“Where did he go?” I mused aloud. People were still working in the cave of the ancients, getting Lady and the Prahbrindrah Drah ready to go upstairs. But Tobo was not among them. “He wouldn’t just run upstairs, would he?” He had the energy of youth but nobody was so energetic they would just charge into that climb on impulse.

While I tromped around muttering and looking for the kid, Goblin did the obvious and questioned witnesses. He got an answer before I finished building up a good mad. “Sleepy. He left.”

“Surprise, surprise... what?” That was not all of it. The little wizard was upset.

“He turned right when he left, Sleepy.”

“He... oh.” Now I did have a good mad worked up. A booming, head-throbbing, want-to-make-somebody-pay, real bad mad. “That idiot! That moron! That darned fool! I’ll cut his legs off! Let’s see if we can catch him.”

Right was downward. Right was deeper into the earth and time, deeper into despair and darkness. Right could only be the road to the resting place of the Mother of Night.

As I started out, with intent to turn right, I collected the standard. The white crow shrieked approval. Goblin sneered, “You’re going to be sorry before you go down a hundred steps, Sleepy.”

I was tempted to abandon the darned thing before we had gone that far. It was too long to be dragging around in a stairwell.

“This stair has no bottom,” I told Goblin. We were puffing badly despite the direction we were headed. We had passed openings into other caves the stairwell had pierced. Each appeared to have been visited by human beings sometime in the past. We discovered both treasures and bone-yards. I suspected Sir Santaraksita, Baladitya and I could not live long enough just to catalog all the mysteries buried beneath the plain. And every darned unknown ancient thing I glimpsed in passing called to me like the sirens of legend.

But Tobo was still ahead of us and seemed deaf to our calling. Perhaps just as we did not waste time and breath responding to Suvrin and Santaraksita, who kept calling down to us from ever farther behind. It was my devout hope they would be smitten by good sense and abandon the pursuit.

Goblin did not respond to my remarks. He had no breath left over.

I asked, “Can’t you use some kind of spell to slow him down or knock him out? I’m worried. He really can’t be so far ahead that he can’t hear us. Darn!” I had gotten tangled with the standard. Again.

Goblin just shook his head and kept moving. “He can’t hear.” Puff-puff. “But he don’t know that he can’t hear.”

Enough said. There was a bottom to the stair. And the Queen of Deceit was napping down there, with just a whisper of awareness left for manipulating a cocky, know-it-all boy who had a touch of talent and had taken possession of an instrument that could become a nasty weapon in the hands of those who would disarm her and have her slumber continue neverending.

After a while we had to slow down. The unnatural light faded until it became too weak to provide a reliable forecast of our footing. The occasional breezes rising past us were no longer cold. And they had begun to bear traces of a familiar, repugnant odor.

When Goblin caught that smell he slowed way down, worked hard on regaining his breath before he had to suck that stench down in its full potency. “Been a while since I’ve come face-to-face with a god,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ve got what it takes to wrangle one anymore.”

“And what would that be? I never realized that I was in the company of an experienced god-wrangler.”

“It takes youth. It takes confidence. It takes brashness. Most of all, it takes a huge ration of stupidity and a lot of luck.”

“Then why don’t we just sit down here and let those sterling qualities carry Tobo through? Though I confess I’m a little nervous about his supply of luck.”

“I’m tempted, Sleepy. Sorely and sincerely. He needs the lesson.” Troubled, perhaps even a little frightened, he continued, “But he’s got the pickax and the Company needs him. He’s the future. Me and One-Eye are today and yesterday.” He started picking up the pace again, which meant a rapid heightening of the intensity of my skirmish with the standard.

“What do you mean, he’s the future?”

“Nobody lives forever, Sleepy.”

The burst of speed did not last. We encountered a mist that complicated the hazards of darkness. The visibility turned nil and the footing became particularly treacherous for a short person trying to drag a long pole down a tight and unpredictable stairway. The moist air was heavier than anything I had experienced since the fogs above the corpse-choked flood that had surrounded Jaicur during the siege.

A chilling shriek came from far back up the stair. My mind flooded with images of horrors pouncing gleefully upon Suvrin and Master Santaraksita.

The shriek continued, approaching faster than any human being could possibly descend that stairway. “What the hell is that?” Goblin snapped.

“I don’t —” The shrieking stopped. At the same time, I stepped down and there was no more down to step. I staggered, betrayed by the darkness. The Lance banged into overhead and wall. We had reached another landing, I assumed, until I felt around with my toes and the standard and could find no more edge. “What do you have over there?” I asked.

“Steps behind me. A wall to the right that goes forward about six feet, then ends. All level floor.”

“I’ve got a wall on the left that just keeps going on and a level floor. Gah!” Something slammed into my back. I had only an instant of warning, the sound of wings violently flapping as a large bird tried to stop before it hit.

The white crow cursed as it landed on the floor. It flopped around for a moment, then started climbing me. That would have been a sight, I am sure, had there been any light to reveal it.

I fought down an impulse to bat the creature into the darkness. I hoped it was here to help. “Tobo!”

My voice rolled away into the distance, then came back in a series of echoes. The heavy air seemed to load those up with despair.